


Whatever Still Shines

by rhenia_ra



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Blood and Injury, First Meetings, Fluff, Gen, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Past Violence, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Punk Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 01:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2330246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhenia_ra/pseuds/rhenia_ra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few moments later, Steve clears his throat. “You make a habit of punching out rich guys?”</p><p>“Why?” Bucky says, “you lookin for a partner in crime or something?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whatever Still Shines

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt taken from [this](http://textsfromtitanfood.tumblr.com/post/96672784247/consider-the-following-aus-we-wore-matching) Tumblr post:  
> "We both got in separate bar fights downtown and now we’re waiting in the ER comparing stories" AU

The punk kid next to him is wearing ripped up jeans and baggy flannel, his head tipped back and half-concealed behind a rag soaked through with red. Bucky wouldn’t have noticed, but the guy keeps tapping his foot in quick, angry snaps on the floor. Whatever happened to land him in the ER, he’s obviously pretty pissed about it.

The woman across from Bucky coughs and he forces himself to look away. He stares instead at a pile of Highlights magazines, trying to find the hidden pictures on the cover without ever moving to pick them up. He finds a violin bow in a girl’s leg. A grasshopper in the wood grain of a picnic table.

Christ, his wrist hurts.

He sits with it resting on an old throw pillow he’d brought from his apartment. It’s twice its normal size and matches the paisley of the pillow.

He rounds on the guy next to him. “You alright?”

The guy sits forward so suddenly he looks like he’s made himself sick. Then, almost suspiciously, he looks around the room—at the woman slumped in her chair, leaking and groggy, the elderly man in a wheelchair with his leg propped up, who periodically leans forward to look at it, groaning each time—and then he looks back at Bucky.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m alright.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, “good.” He shifts to face the guy and feels the blood drain from his face when the pillow shifts with him. He clears his throat. “It’s just you look like you’re about to hit someone.”

The guy snorts. His voice is hoarse. “I already tried that. Didn’t work out so well.”

“Well, ya didn’t have to go and tell me that. Could’ve said ‘you should see the other guy’, and I’d never know.”

The guy laughs and his eyes crinkle at the sides, and he tips his head back and keeps it there. Bucky waits, but the guy doesn’t say anything else, just breathes loudly through his mouth.

Bucky stares at the floor.

“You alright?”

The guy is watching him from the corner of his eye. Even with the bottom half of his face covered, Bucky can tell he’s smiling.

“Never been better.”

“You sure? If you need me to take care of someone for you—”

Bucky laughs, but just to make sure, says, “You’re not serious?”

“Nah,” he says. “I’m not serious. Running out of noses to break.”

“Thought that counts, I guess.”

He sighs. “Won’t get much more than that out of me, seems like.”

Bucky throws his good hand up. “Hey now. Didn’t you say something about the other guy looking worse?”

The kid looks pleased as hell, but then he straightens up and narrows his eyes at Bucky.

“Did you just try to comfort me when I was trying to comfort you?”

Bucky laughs and shrugs.

The guy pulls the rag from his face finally. Everything below his cheekbones is stained pink and his nose crooks perversely to the left. His jaw is much stronger than Bucky’d expected though, from how small he is. It makes him look even more defiant than before. 

“I’m Steve.”

“Bucky.”

Steve nods. Then he says, again, “you alright?”

Bucky shakes his head, grinning. “Better than the other guy.”

“And where’s the other guy?”

He runs his hand through his hair, exhaling slow. “Hell, in his mansion probably, feet propped up and drinking expensive scotch.”

Steve nods. “Yeah, I see what you mean. Sounds awful.”

Bucky looks at the floor again, hard enough that maybe his arm will stop throbbing. 

A few moments later, Steve clears his throat. “You make a habit of punching out rich guys?”

“Why?” Bucky says, “you lookin for a partner in crime or something?”

Steve laughs. “You’re the guy who punched someone so hard you broke your own wrist.”

“I didn’t—”

“Let me have my delusions. One of us has to’ve won tonight and it sure as hell wasn’t me.”

Bucky looks up from the floor to see that Steve has moved one seat closer to him. His blonde hair sticks to one side and he looks more sincere than anyone ever ought to.

“Tell me,” Bucky says, “—tell me about it.”

Steve is at a friend’s party, buzzed, but not drunk, and he’s ready to go home. He finds his way to the kitchen to grab a glass of water, runs headlong into another guy, who almost spills his drink. They both apologize a bunch, laughing because they’re both a couple in. He pats Steve on the back and heads back to the party, and Steve doesn’t think anything of it till he’s on his way out and sees the guy had dropped a bag of pills. Not a big deal or anything, but then he sees the guy standing next to a girl, handing her his cup—

“I didn’t even stop to think maybe I was overreacting,” he says, “I just jumped. Knocked the drink all over the girl, and she was livid until things calmed down enough for me to explain.” He laughs at that last part, sounding fond. “She kept trying to tell me she was going to drive me to the hospital. Yelling to the whole room about it. She was still looking for her keys when I left an hour later.” He pulls a key ring from his pocket, jingles it.

“Jesus, Steve. How the hell d’you call that losing?”

He frowns. “Guy got his pills back. Knocked me clean out for a minute and by the time I came round, he was gone.”

Bucky scoffs. “I don’t know whether to be impressed or tell you off for driving with a concussion.”

Still frowning, he says, “Neither.”

“You fucking saved—”

“I’m not a hero just because some other guy’s a villain.”

“Jesus, Steve,” Bucky says again. He starts to respond but changes his mind halfway through. “You’re—you’re so damned serious. You sure you didn’t get hit for crashing someone’s party with a lecture on moral philosophy?”

His lips twitch. He turns away so Bucky can’t see his face.

“I called it, didn’t I? Bet you stop all the couples makin’ out to give them condoms and pamphlets about consent.” 

Steve rounds back, looking ready to spit fire, and Bucky’s laughing, maybe harder than he should, when Natasha walks through the door. Her eyes land on him without even a sweep of the rest of the room, and she glides over in four easy steps. She stops, too close for comfort, and stares down at his purple, splotchy arm.

“Hey,” he says quietly, and when she doesn’t answer, “I guess Clint told you.”

“Imagine, James,” she says, not bothering to lower her voice, “four voicemails, beginning with ‘please help, Bucky’s going to end up in the hospital’ and ending with ‘Bucky’s laying on his floor, refusing to go to the hospital.’ It was more dramatic than the movie I saw with my date.”

He groans. “Tell me you didn’t leave your date, Nat.”

She reaches out to push his bangs back from his forehead before she grabs hold of his chin and tilts it up. “Yeah, I left my date, you fucking idiot.”

“You’ve been looking forward to that for w—”

“Stop trying to change the subject.”

He shakes his head free of her grasp and looks hard at the floor, at the magazines, at the door—

Natasha’s jacket brushes his arm as she sits next to him. 

“You one of the guys he hit?”

He hears Steve give a strangled laugh. 

“Do I look like I deserve it?”

“James isn’t always the best judge of character.”

Steve laughs again, awkward. 

Bucky doesn’t realize his shoulders have tensed until the tightness of his skin sends a swell of pain through the entire left side of his body. He must make a sound, because Natasha is in his space again, and she rests her hand on his knee and leaves it there.

She says, “The whole arm?”

“Just the wrist.” He pauses. “I think maybe a rib or two? But I’m not sure. Nerves are out of whack on that side.”

She nods. And then, “He’s here too, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not going to see him.”

“No.” He leans back, puts a hand over his face.

“You don’t have anything left to say to him. Clint says you completely wrecked the East wing of his house.”

When he glances over, she’s smiling. 

“But,” she says, “you’re done now.” It’s not a question.

On her other side, Steve shifts loud enough for Bucky to know he’s been listening. To stop him from leaving, he says, “I didn’t put anyone in the hospital, Steve.”

Steve coughs. “No?”

“I tried,” Bucky says, looking at Nat and smiling, “coulda’ put Rumlow in a bed right next to him if I hadn’t been so blind on my right side—”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Steve says, a bit too loud, “I’ll take him out for you next time.”

Natasha lights up, surprised. “Got yourself a bodyguard, James?”

Bucky frowns. “He’s been in enough fights for the night.”

A nurse calls his name from the doorway. He sighs, slumping a bit before moving to stand. He pauses in front of Steve and says, “I’d shake your hand but, y’know.” 

“Yeah,” Steve says, “I know.”

“Take care of yourself, Steve.”

“Jesus,” he says, looking disgusted. “You take care of yourself, _James_. I’ll be just fine.”

Bucky shakes his head. “Too serious.” He follows the nurse from the room.

He looks back as the doors swing closed behind him to see Natasha smirking while Steve talks, staring up at the ceiling. His feet are still but he gestures with his hands, and Bucky can see his eyes lit up from across the ER.

**Author's Note:**

> Title stolen from Nick Flynn's ["forgetting something."](http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/forgetting-something) Thanks for reading!


End file.
